LATEST DEALS PROVIDE BOOST FOR TELUS'S AGRI-DATA BUSINESS UNIT.

Telus Corp. is putting a push on its agriculture business after making a series of acquisitions that will help diversify its revenue and use its telecommunications networks to power farming and food technologies such as autonomous tractors and soil sensors.

The telecom on Thursday said its Telus Agriculture business unit will provide supply chain management and data analytics services to businesses at each level of the food chain.

Executive vice-president François Gratton said Telus was drawn to the agriculture sector, in part, because its different players — seed growers, farmers, food manufacturers, supermarkets and restaurants — aren't sharing information between themselves as efficiently as they could.

“Today, they're completely isolated,” he said. “We saw a huge opportunity to increase yield, reduce waste and, importantly, be able to trace the quality and safety of your food from its origin.”

Telus in the past year has acquired seven companies in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada that when combined cover the entire food system, it said, including real-time data for 170 million acres of farmland that will help build “AI and machine learning-based insights” for farmers.

“A farmer, as an example, will come to us and look at our software solutions in order to increase their ability to apply water, pesticides, nutrients in exact quantities,” Gratton said.

By connecting data across each level of the food chain, Telus said it could help trace the origin of foods to the field level, helping retailers deal with food-borne illness outbreaks without having to indiscriminately throw out tonnes of product.

“Our solution is going to be able to identify, eventually down at the plant level, the origin of the food and the safety of the food,” Gratton said. “If there's an issue that arises in one supermarket, we can clearly identify where it came from and reduce enormous tons of waste.”

Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, said agriculture has lagged behind other sectors, including health care, when it comes to adopting big data analytic tools.

“The agricultural revolution is coming. It's happening,” he said. “Canada could play a massive leadership role in shaping it.”

Telus' latest acquisitions include AFS Technologies Inc., a Florida-based software company focused on the consumer goods manufacturing sector, and Agrian Inc., a California software company that helps with crop management.

Telus declined to say how much it spent in total on the acquisitions, but it paid $315 million for AFS Technologies, the only acquisition that met the disclosure threshold.

Gratton noted the business unit now has 1,200 staff and an office presence in 10 countries.

“It's a sizable investment for Telus,” he said.

Telus cast the move as a part of its broader aim to expand beyond classic telecommunications services. The company said Telus Agriculture is a similar strategy to Telus Health, the health-care technology services business unit it launched in 2008.

The push into agriculture will also involve Telus' expanding 5G, the latest mobile network generation, Gratton said.